


Of Death and Murder Apartments

by orphan_account



Category: Phandom
Genre: Death, Ghost!Phil, M/M, Right?, but obvs ghosts arent real so its all ok, dan's very freaked out ok, ghost - Freeform, murder apartment, nope.
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-14
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-06 15:45:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5422772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dan is happy. He's found a huge apartment and it's really cheap.</p><p>Well, he <em>was</em> happy until he discovered that it's really cheap because someone was murdered there a few years ago and apparently past residents have claimed that the place is haunted. </p><p>But he knows that ghosts aren't real, so everything will be fine.</p><p>Then he meets Phil, and he isn't sure what to think anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> idek ok
> 
> this has been in my head for weeks and I finally wrote it ok
> 
> enjoy

Dan walks slowly through his new apartment. He smiles slightly to himself. This place was huge, and he’d gotten it really cheap. He walks down the hall, following his new landlord, James. 

“And just by the way, if you bang on the water pipes in morse code to tell me you’re ready to pay rent like the last guy did, you can just get the fuck out.” James continues, scrunching up his nose. “He was weird as hell.”

Dan had decided he liked James. He was good, as landlords go. And it definitely helped that he swore as much as Dan did, and thus had no problem with constant swearing.

At that moment, the hall light flickers. Dan glances up at the ceiling.

“What was that?” He asks, looking to James.

“Hm, the lights?” James shrugs. “People claim this apartment’s haunted or something. Apparently some guy was murdered here a few years back or something? I don’t really know, I only became the landlord after the last guy left because of those claims.”

“You’re...not serious, right?” Dan asks, suddenly concerned. Then again, that would explain the surprisingly cheap apartment. 

“Are you fucking kidding me?” James snorts. “It’s just some drunk idiots who don’t want to admit they broke the wiring. Of course I’m not serious.”

But Dan can’t help but get the feeling that he’s only half telling the truth. Sure, the place may not be haunted (ghosts aren’t real, obviously), but Dan gets the feeling that someone was actually murdered here.

He got a fucking murder apartment. Just his luck.

“Right.” Dan swallows the lump in his throat and forces a smile back on his face. “I’ll see you around, James?”

“Yeah, sure.” James nods. “And I noticed you brought video game consoles, so if you’d like to hang out and video game with me at some point, then I’m game.” He smirks at his joke, then adds, “Seriously, I have no friends.”

“Same.” Dan legitimately smiles. “I’ll see you for video games then.”

“Of course.” James grins and leaves, closing the door behind him. Dan decides he officially got the best landlord ever.

Oh, and the murder apartment. Can’t forget that.

Pushing his new home’s dark history out of his mind, Dan re-opens the door and heads down the stairs to his car. He still needs to bring up a few boxes. In all honesty, he’s so lazy that he knows he’ll only bring up this one and then fall asleep, but he tells himself he’ll bring up the other five anyway. 

As he lugs the box that’s definitely not as heavy as it seems to him (he really needs more exercise, not that he’s ever going to get it) up the stairs, he considers the possible murder in his new apartment. The place _was_ scarily cheap, but wouldn’t someone have mentioned it to him beforehand? Plus, past residents claiming the place was haunted was a bit of a stretch. Nonetheless, when he thought about it, the apartment did feel...off somehow. But couldn’t that just all be in his head?

“Need some help with your _one box_?” 

Dan almost drops the box. He looks up to see a young man who couldn’t be more than a year or two older than him leaning against the wall next to his door. The man had jet black hair (in fact, so black that it must’ve been dyed, it was almost unnatural) and striking blue eyes. Dan spends too long considering what color his hair could have been before he dyed it. Other than blonde, he can’t think of a hair color that normally comes with blue eyes, and this guy just didn’t seem like the type to be blonde.

“Are you ok there?”

Dan glances up, having looked down again while contemplating the eye color of someone he just met. He smiles as if he hasn’t just gone off in his head about something completely ridiculous. 

“Yeah, I’m fine.” He replies, and he is not fine.

“Mm, good. I was worried you fainted or something. That _one box_ sure looks heavy.” The man smirks. 

“Well then you take it.” Dan huffs. He thrusts it into the man’s arms.

The man smiles and holds it quite easily, making a show of tossing it a little bit into the air before catching it again as if it weighs nothing.

“Doesn’t seem too heavy to me.” He shrugs and moves his head towards Dan’s door. “You live in this one, right?”

“Yeah.” Dan nods.

“I’m Phil, by the way.” The man, who Dan can now place as Phil, adds as he walks into Dan’s apartment through the open door.

 

“Dan.” Dan extends his hand to shake Phil’s, but Phil just looks at it as if he doesn’t know what to do with it and Dan can swear that, for just a second, he can see what looks like something close to fear in his eyes, but then they go back to their normal cheery state, and Dan decides that he was imagining it.

“I’m holding your box, you know.” Phil smirks. “Unless you want to hope that nothing in here is fragile.”

“Alright, wise guy.” Dan rolls his eyes. “Could you just put that in my bedroom?”

“Got it.” Phil nods and heads off.

Dan is about to tell him where the bedroom is, but it seems like Phil already knows where he’s going, almost as if he lives here. Dan follows him, slightly confused but also noting that maybe Phil did live here before, it’s possible he’d moved out. Maybe it had something to do with the murder.

No, that seemed unlikely. Dan was probably just overthinking all of this.

He follows Phil into his bedroom, where Phil is staring the one poster that he’s managed to put up.

“Fall Out Boy?” Phil asks, smiling. “They’re great.”

“Yeah.” Dan nods.

Phil turns around, and there’s yet another look on his face that Dan doesn’t understand. It’s like Phil knows the band, but his eyes show no recognition. But then, yet again, the look is gone, and Phil goes back to smiling at Dan. Dan forces himself to smile back through the confusion. Oh well, Phil might just be a little bit weird, that’s all. He shouldn’t be judging a book by its cover. Or a Phil by the weird looks in his eyes. 

“Earth to Dan? Come in Dan?”

Dan is startled out of his thoughts by Phil. 

“Mm, sorry.” Dan shakes his head slightly. “I was just thinking.”

“I thought I smelled something burning.” Phil smirks and giggles a bit.

Dan rolls his eyes yet again. “Oh shut up.”

“Never.” Phil smiles. “I’ve got to go, so...see you around?”

Dan turns to open up the box that Phil brought up. “Yeah, do you...” 

He stops talking when he turns around, because Phil is no longer there. 

“Live around here.” He finishes to no one in particular.

Dan is definitely confused. How could Phil have left? He hadn’t heard footsteps. Plus, that was ridiculously fast. How? 

Dan frowned. What with his sudden disappearing, the weird looks he inexplicably got in his eyes, and how surprisingly easy it was for him to carry the box that Dan found so heavy (even though Dan might’ve just been out of shape), Phil was an all-around weird person.

Dan couldn’t put his finger on it, but something about Phil was just as unnatural as his dyed hair.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas...Eve. 
> 
> Or Merry Christmas if that's what it is where you are.
> 
> As a gift, I'm updating! Finally! This has literally been half finished since I finished Chapter 1, so I apologize for not uploading. 
> 
> I'm also updating Wish Upon A Star, my other (not on hold) chaptered fic, so look out for that!
> 
> And a special Christmasy one-shot is in the works <3
> 
> Thanks for reading, and happy holidays!

Dan gets some Chinese food for dinner. He’s too tired (and much too lazy) to cook, and he would rather just lie on the couch and marathon The Great British Bake Off until he inevitably falls asleep than do any more work.

So here he is, lying on the couch eating some really good pad thai (he was lucky enough to have landed a good restaurant just a block away from his new home), and pretending to be but not actually paying attention to the show. Really, his mind is back to the murder. James couldn’t have been serious, right? There was no way a murder apartment was actually available to be bought and lived in. That was ridiculous. 

He’s so focused on his thoughts that he doesn’t realize the lights have gone out until a few seconds after. He frowns. Faulty wiring, indeed. After a quick glance around, he discovered that only the bedroom light had gone out (he’d hooked up the TV in here because it was the closest room to the front door and he didn’t want to move any farther than necessary).

He stands up on his bed that he’d barely survived putting up. Removing the cover of the light, and using his phone as a flashlight, he discovers that nothing seems wrong with the lamp. He’s not a mechanical expert, but all seems okay. He replaces the cover. 

“Maybe something’s wrong with the switch?” He wonders aloud. 

He hops off of his bed and heads to wall to find...the light is turned off. He frowns. Faulty wiring doesn’t just flick off light switches. He switches it back on and the light goes on immediately. 

Dan is really confused now. How does a light just switch itself off and then work perfectly fine?

For just a moment, Dan’s mind jumps back to what James had told him earlier. _“People claim this apartment’s haunted or something. Apparently some guy was murdered here a few years back or something?”_

He pushes that out of his mind immediately. No, that’s ridiculous. Ghosts aren’t real, and everyone knows that. It was probably just a one time thing. Nothing to worry about. It won’t ever happen again.

It happens again.

It happens a lot in fact.

At least once every day.

But after that first time, it almost seems helpful. When Dan sleeps in, he’ll find himself startled awake by bright light in his face and realize that the light has mysteriously turned itself on again. When he has a bad day and just needs to sleep, but forgets to turn off his light, he doesn’t need to get up to do it because it just turns itself off. In fact, he’d even go as far as to say the creepy lights were getting helpful at this point, and he started to ignore the occurrences and just accept them as part of the creepy apartment.

* * * * *

What with settling in and the creepy lights, Dan had almost forgotten his encounter with Phil, who he didn’t see again until a week after their first encounter, right after he’d finished unpacking. In fact, it was almost as if Phil had purposefully waited until Dan was settled to greet him again.

Dan is walking out to go to the store when Phil manages to startle him again.

“Where’re you off too?” 

Dan nearly falls down the stairs and pivots to face Phil, who is leaning on the wall and smirking again.

“Phil!” Dan complains. “Don’t do that!”

“Aw, c’mon.” Phil fakes a pout. “I’ve only done that to you once before.”

“Yeah, but I’m a bit jumpy!” Dan protests.

Phil smirks, with yet another strange look in his eyes, this time one of joking, almost as if he was a prankster who successfully completed a prank without the person he pranked knowing it was him all along. Dan shudders involuntarily before, yet again, the look disappears from Phil’s eyes.

“What, is your apartment haunted?” Phil asks, raising an eyebrow. “The last four people ran out screaming about ghosts and how afraid they were, calling for their mommy.” 

Dan sees what could only be described as pride in Phil’s eyes. He decides to ignore it, because it makes no sense in this situation.

“Don’t be stupid.” Dan rolls his eyes. “Ghosts aren’t real.”

Phil is smirking again. Dan is feeling slightly uncomfortable. “Right. Got it. No ghosts.”

Dan frowns. “I’m going to the store.”

“See you around, then.” Phil nods.

Dan starts down the stairs, and he turns to ask again if Phil lives here, but once again, when he turns around to ask, Phil is gone.

“Great.” He mutters to himself, pushing the question of how Phil walked away so quietly again out of his mind. 

_I’m going to the store_ , He reminds himself, _and I am forgetting that that ever happened._

He doesn’t forget.

* * * *

When Dan returns, carrying two full bags of food (he’s actually cooking tonight, spaghetti and tomato sauce, and he’s proud of himself), he walks up the stairs slowly and apprehensively, expecting Phil to be waiting there.

He isn’t.

Dan enters his apartment, and he can only say that, for some reason, he’s sort of disappointed that Phil wasn’t there. But he pushes that thought aside and sets his mind on cooking. As long as he can manage to not burn his water while boiling it, he should be fine.

He fills up a pan with water and turns on the stove. While he waits for it to boil, he brings in his laptop to check tumblr. He’s scrolling through his feed when he hears a scraping noise. He turns his head towards the stove, which seems to be the source, and his eyes widen. He watches as the rusty stove dial turns itself down slowly, moving from high to medium. 

“What the fuck?” He asks aloud, though he knows that there’s no one there to answer.

That’s when he realizes. The water was boiling, and so much so that if it had been left a minute more, it would’ve overflowed. If the dial hadn’t mysteriously turned, he never would have noticed. 

Shaken, he slowly opens the packet of noodles and dumps them into the pan, stirring slowly. 

Time flies by, and he realizes that the pasta is way past cooked. He turns off the stove completely, then gets a strainer out of the cabinet and places it in the sink, carefully pouring the contents of the pan into it. He watches as the water drains through the singular strands and his thoughts wander back to the weird occurrences in the past few days. It couldn’t possibly be ghosts, as he knows that _ghosts aren’t real_.

He realizes that he’s let time slip past him again and picks up the strained pasta, pouring it back into the pan. He goes to open the tomato sauce, but it’s already open. He frowns. He definitely didn’t open that. Still frowning, he moves to pick it up and then crosses the kitchen again, and proceeds to pour it into the pasta. He stops when it’s halfway empty, because he’s already poured too much. He grabs a wooden spoon and stirs it together, then carries it out to his lonely dining room table, where no more than one person has ever sat. He sighs and begins to eat, straight from the pot. He doesn’t care, no one can see him. He’s probably making a huge mess, but he doesn’t care. 

Turns out he is making a mess. There’s sauce down his shirt and all over his face. Oops.

He’s too lazy to fully clean, so he just pulls off his shirt, wipes his face off with it, and throws it in the washer (he can start it in the morning), then he sloppily pours the remainder of the pasta into a container and snaps on the lid, shoving it in the fridge. He slams the fridge door then throws the pot lazily into the dishwasher, along with his spoon (he can start that in the morning too). 

He’s really tired, so he just gets into bed in his jeans. The light flicks itself off again, but he’s not even questioning that anymore. He can swear that as he’s drifting off to sleep, he vaguely sees someone pulling the sheets up to his chin and hear a faint whisper of “ _good night_ ”, but no one could’ve gotten in, the front door is locked. So he has to be imagining it.

Right?


End file.
